In the foregoing message we pointed out that, according to the principle ordained by God, the lower life cannot subdue the higher life, but the higher life swallows up the negative aspects of the lower life. The divine life is like an all-inclusive dose of medicine. Included in this dose is the killing power of the crucifixion of Christ that puts to death the negative elements of our human life. Furthermore, Christ’s resurrection power resurrects and uplifts all the proper elements in our human life, the elements which God created in His image and after His likeness. God created man with a mind, emotion, and will. However, all these parts of our being became corrupted through the fall. When the divine life enters into us and we are grafted into this life, the killing power it contains terminates the corruption in our mind, emotion, and will. Then it resurrects the elements originally created by God in His image and after His likeness for the fulfillment of His purpose. The divine life does not annul what has been created by God. On the contrary, it resurrects our created life and uplifts it.
Teachers of the Bible may say that as those who have been crucified with Christ, we must reject our soul. However, the more we try to reject the soul, the more it is present with us. For example, after we are saved, we may become very tender in our emotion. According to my experience, the more I denied my soul with its mind, emotion, and will, the more I discovered that my mind had become keener, my emotion more active, and my will stronger. Before I was saved, I was like a jellyfish, but now my will is extremely strong. How can we explain this phenomenon? Have our mind, emotion, and will not been crucified and denied? Yes, they have. Remember, the Bible says not only that we have been crucified with Christ, but also that we have been resurrected with Him. Crucifixion and burial are not the end. Once our soul has been crucified and buried, it is resurrected, for it has been grafted into the divine life. Because the divine life and the human life have been grafted together, the killing power in the divine life crucifies us, and the resurrection power in it uplifts us.
Our crucifixion with Christ, accomplished more than nineteen hundred years ago, is realized and experienced today through the divine life within us. The same is true of resurrection. Both the effectiveness of crucifixion and the power of resurrection are included in the all-inclusive, life-giving Spirit. From the time we believed in the Lord Jesus and were grafted into His all-inclusive life, the various ingredients of this life have been working within us. The more we tell the Lord Jesus that we love Him, the more we offer ourselves to Him to contain Him, and the more time we spend with Him in the Word and in fellowship, the more the ingredients of the divine life work to terminate us and to resurrect us. This causes our mind to become sober, our emotion to become warm, and our will to become strong. The corrupted element of our human life is crucified and buried, but the positive element is uplifted in resurrection. Hence, it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (Gal. 2:20). Here we see the function of the grafted life. The function of this life is to bring about the transformation which results in conformation to Christ. As we inwardly experience crucifixion, burial, and resurrection, we are transformed and conformed to the image of Christ. Transformation and conformation are the result of the inward working of the grafted life.